Arnold Bennett: Buried Alive, The Old Wives' Tale & The Card (3 Books in One Edition). Bennett ArnoldЧитать онлайн книгу.
stiffly his policy of non-interference.
Priam Farll, angry, resentful, and quite untouched by the recital, shrugged his shoulders. He was animated by the sole desire to fly from the widow and progeny of his late valet. But he could not fly. The Herculean John was too close to the door. So he shrugged his shoulders a second time.
"Yes, sir," said Matthew, "you may shrug your shoulders, but you can't shrug us out of existence. Here we are, and you can't get over us. You are our father, and I presume that a kind of respect is due to you. Yet how can you hope for our respect? Have you earned it? Did you earn it when you ill-treated our poor mother? Did you earn it when you left her, with the most inhuman cruelty, to fend for herself in the world? Did you earn it when you abandoned your children born and unborn? You are a bigamist, sir; a deceiver of women! Heaven knows--"
"Would you mind just toasting this bread?" Alice interrupted his impassioned discourse by putting the loaded toasting-fork into his hands, "while I make the tea?"
It was a novel way of stopping a mustang in full career, but it succeeded.
While somewhat perfunctorily holding the fork to the fire, Matthew glared about him, to signify his righteous horror, and other sentiments.
"Please don't burn it," said Alice gently. "Suppose you were to sit down on this foot-stool." And then she poured boiling water on the tea, put the lid on the pot, and looked at the clock to note the exact second at which the process of infusion had begun.
"Of course," burst out Henry, the twin of Matthew, "I need not say, madam, that you have all our sympathies. You are in a----"
"Do you mean me?" Alice asked.
In an undertone Priam could be heard obstinately repeating, "Never set eyes upon her before! Never set eyes on the woman before!"
"I do, madam," said Henry, not to be cowed nor deflected from his course. "I speak for all of us. You have our sympathies. You could not know the character of the man you married, or rather with whom you went through the ceremony of marriage. However, we have heard, by inquiry, that you made his acquaintance through the medium of a matrimonial agency; and indirectly, when one does that sort of thing, one takes one's chance. Your position is an extremely delicate one; but it is not too much to say that you brought it on yourself. In my work, I have encountered many sad instances of the result of lax moral principles; but I little thought to encounter the saddest of all in my own family. The discovery is just as great a blow to us as it is to you. We have suffered; my mother has suffered. And now, I fear, it is your turn to suffer. You are not this man's wife. Nothing can make you his wife. You are living in the same house with him--under circumstances--er--without a chaperon. I hesitate to characterize your situation in plain words. It would scarcely become me, or mine, to do so. But really no lady could possibly find herself in a situation more false than--I am afraid there is only one word, open immorality, and--er--to put yourself right with society there is one thing, and only one, left for you to--er--do. I--I speak for the family, and I--"
"Sugar?" Alice questioned the mother of curates.
"Yes, please."
"One lump, or two?"
"Two, please."
"Speaking for the family--" Henry resumed.
"Will you kindly pass this cup to your mother?" Alice suggested.
Henry was obliged to take the cup. Excited by the fever of eloquence, he unfortunately upset it before it had reached his mother's hands.
"Oh, Henry!" murmured the lady, mournfully aghast. "You always were so clumsy! And a clean cloth, too!"
"Don't mention it, please," said Alice, and then to her Henry: "My dear, just run into the kitchen, and bring me something to wipe this up. Hanging behind the door--you'll see."
Priam sprang forward with astonishing celerity. And the occasion brooking no delay, the guardian of the portal could not but let him pass. In another moment the front door banged. Priam did not return. And Alice staunched the flow of tea with a clean, stiff serviette taken from the sideboard drawer.
A Departure
The family of the late Henry Leek, each with a cup in hand, experienced a certain difficulty in maintaining the interview at the pitch set by Matthew and Henry. Mrs. Leek, their mother, frankly gave way to soft tears, while eating bread-and-butter, jam and zebra-like toast. John took everything that Alice offered to him in gloomy and awkward silence.
"Does he mean to come back?" Matthew demanded at length. He had risen from the foot-stool.
"Who?" asked Alice.
Matthew paused, and then said, savagely and deliberately: "Father."
Alice smiled. "I'm afraid not. I'm afraid he's gone out. You see, he's a rather peculiar man. It's not the slightest use me trying to drive him. He can only be led. He has his good points--I can speak candidly as he isn't here, and I will--he has his good points. When Mrs. Leek, as I suppose she calls herself, spoke about his cruelty to her--well, I understood that. Far be it from me to say a word against him; he's often very good to me, but--another cup, Mr. John?"
John advanced to the table without a word, holding his cup.
"You don't mean to say, ma'am," said Mrs. Leek "that he--?"
Alice nodded grievously.
Mrs. Leek burst into tears. "When Johnnie was barely five weeks old," she said, "he would twist my arm. And he kept me without money. And once he locked me up in the cellar. And one morning when I was ironing he snatched the hot iron out of my hand and--"
"Don't! Don't!" Alice soothed her. "I know. I know all you can tell me. I know because I've been through--"
"You don't mean to say he threatened you with the flat-iron?"
"If threatening was only all!" said Alice, like a martyr.
"Then he's not changed, in all these years!" wept the mother of curates.
"If he has, it's for the worse," said Alice. "How was I to tell?" she faced the curates. "How could I know? And yet nobody, nobody, could be nicer than he is at times!"
"That's true, that's true," responded the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek. "He was always so changeable. So queer."
"Queer!" Alice took up the word. "That's it Queer! I don't think he's quite right in his head, not quite right. He has the very strangest fancies. I never take any notice of them, but they're there. I seldom get up in the morning without thinking, 'Well, perhaps to-day he'll have to be taken off.'"
"Taken off?"
"Yes, to Hanwell, or wherever it is. And you must remember," she said gazing firmly at the curates, "you've got his blood in your veins. Don't forget that. I suppose you want to make him go back to you, Mrs. Leek, as he certainly ought."
"Ye-es," murmured Mrs. Leek feebly.
"Well, if you can persuade him to go," said Alice, "if you can make him see his duty, you're welcome. But I'm sorry for you. I think I ought to tell you that this is my house, and my furniture. He's got nothing at all. I expect he never could save. Many's the blow he's laid on me in anger, but all the same I pity him. I pity him. And I wouldn't like to leave him in the lurch. Perhaps these three strong young men'll be able to do something with him. But I'm not sure. He's very strong. And he has a way of leaping out so sudden like."
Mrs. Leek shook her head as memories of the past rose up in her mind.
"The fact is," said Matthew sternly, "he ought to be prosecuted for bigamy. That's what ought to be done."
"Most decidedly," Henry concurred.
"You're quite right! You're quite right!" said Alice. "That's only justice. Of course he'd deny that he was the same Henry Leek. He'd deny it like anything. But in the end I dare say you'd be able to prove it. The worst of these law cases is they're so expensive. It means private